Sidharth Malhotra

Sidharth Malhotra (born 16 January 1985) is an Indian actor and former model who appears in Bollywood films. Malhotra began a career as a model at the age of 18. After quitting modeling, he assisted director Karan Johar in the 2010 film My Name Is Khan. He made his acting debut with a leading role in the commercially successful comedy drama Student of the Year (2012), for which he received a Filmfare Award for Best Male Debut nomination. He went on to star in the romantic comedy Hasee Toh Phasee (2014) and the highly successful romantic thriller Ek Villain (2014).

Born

January 16, 1985 (age 31)
Delhi, India

Occupation

Actor, model

Years active

2012–present

Nationality

Indian

Early life
Malhotra was born in Delhi, into a Punjabi family, to Sunil, a former employee of the Indian Merchant Navy, and Rimmi Malhotra, a homemaker. He was schooled at Delhi's Don Bosco School and Naval Public School, and later attended Shaheed Bhagat Singh College. At the age of 18, Malhotra began modelling. Although he was successful, he decided to quit after four years because he was dissatisfied with the profession. Interested to pursue an acting career, he successfully auditioned for a film to be directed by Anubhav Sinha. However, the film was shelved, following which he worked as an assistant director to Karan Johar on the 2010 film My Name Is Khan.
Acting career
In 2012, Malhotra made his acting debut with Johar's Student of the Year alongside Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt. He was cast as Abhimanyu Singh, a scholarship student of limited financial means, who competes with his wealthy best friend Rohan (played by Dhawan) to win an annual school championship. Film critic Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN considered Malhotra's performance to be "earnest", adding that he had "a pleasing presence." Student of the Year was a financial success, grossing ₹700 million (US$10

million) domestically.
Malhotra was next paired opposite Parineeti Chopra and Adah Sharma for the romantic comedy Hasee Toh Phasee (2014), which tells the love story of a drug-abusing scientist and an under-confident aspiring businessman. Mohar Basu of Koimoi found his performance to be "restrained" and described his chemistry with Chopra as "lively" and "heartfelt"; Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV praised his screen presence and compared it to the early work of Amitabh Bachchan. The film performed moderately well at the box office, with global revenues of ₹620 million (US$9.1 million).

Malhotra's second release of 2014 was the Mohit Suri-directed romantic thriller Ek Villain. Malhotra was cast as Guru, a hardened criminal whose terminally-ill wife (played by Shraddha Kapoor) is murdered by a serial killer (played by Riteish Deshmukh). Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express reviewed: "Sidharth Malhotra is watchable even if he has a hard time doing menace — he just seems so nice and wholesome all the time, even when he is crunching bones." The film was generally perceived to be plagiarised from the Korean film I Saw the Devil, although Suri dismissed the allegations. The film eventually emerged as a major commercial success with domestic revenues of over ₹1 billion (US$15 million). The box office performance of the film established Malhotra as one of the most successful among the new generation of Bollywood actors.
In 2015, Malhotra appeared in the remake of the Hollywood film Warrior (2011), entitled Brothers, directed by Karan Malhotra and co-starring Akshay Kumar, Jacqueline Fernandez and Jackie Shroff. As of September 2014, he is filming alongside Alia Bhatt and Fawad Khan for Shakun Batra's family drama Kapoor and Sons and has committed to play a time traveler in debutant director Nitya Mehra's science fiction Baar Baar Dekho, opposite Katrina Kaif.
Other work
Apart from acting in films, Malhotra is an endorser of several brands and products, such as Coca-Cola and American Swan. He also does charity work. In 2013, Malhotra performed at an event alongside Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Aditya Roy Kapur, Shraddha Kapoor and Huma Qureshi to raise funds for the flood-affected victims of Uttarakhand. and he collaborated with PeTA for a campaign to create awareness about dogs.